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  • From: Lawrence Lessig <lessig AT pobox.com>
  • To: cc-lessigletter AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Community_studios] [cc-lessigletter] CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on New Projects
  • Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 13:16:43 -0800

[This email is part of a weekly series written by Lawrence Lessig and
others about the history and future of Creative Commons. If you would
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Alternatively, if you know others who might find these interesting,
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From last week's email:
Next week: More new projects.

The story continues.
So, what's new? Where are we going next? What projects would Creative
Commons like to do that this fundraising campaign could support?

In this next-to-last email, I'll describe two projects we'd like to
launch. This isn't a formal announcement. If you ask me about these
projects outside of this email, I'll deny knowing anything about
them. Both are far enough along to build support to launch them, but
not far enough along to properly announce them. What would put them
over the edge is a strong reaction of support from you (or your
friends). And now is the time we need that support.

A public domain wiki
One project that we're very close to announcing draws together the
wisdom and expertise of the Wikipedia project with the extraordinary
foresight of a major rights organization keen to help clarify the
boundaries of the public domain. The project would work something
like this: This rights clearing organization (and we can't say which
one just now) would give us a data dump of records they have about
authors in a particular country. Those records would include books
published by those authors, the authors' dates of birth, and if
available or relevant, the authors' dates of death. Using that
information, one could determine which works were in the public
domain. The problem is that the data about whether an author has died
is often incomplete and sometimes inaccurate. So the question is how
we might supplement that data through a community process that could
add lots of value to this database.

Enter the ideals of a wiki. Through a site run by the Creative
Commons affiliate in the country we're working with, we'd build a
community devoted to "rediscovering the public domain in country X."
That community would develop procedures for updating the data about
the public domain status of a work— procedures for establishing
levels of confidence in the accuracy of that data, for example,
before it was added to the wiki. The community would also encourage
other data be added to the database, such as reviews of the authors'
books, links to places the books might be bought, and biographies of
the authors themselves. We imagine this site could become a goldmine
of information about authorship within country X, drawing new
attention out of print or hard to find work by older authors and
generating new interest in their work.

We'd then craft a set of APIs — basically interfaces to the database
— that anyone could use to ping the database and get information
about a particular work. For example, anyone could ask, for free, if
a particular book by a particular author is in the public domain or
not, and the database would return an answer with some indication
about levels of confidence. (E.g., "With 95% confidence, we can say
this book is in the public domain.") This data could then be used by
people to decide what books could be made available on the Internet
or what permissions are needed to use the book in a university class.

This project, called the WikiPD, has just received seed funding. For
us to commit to it will require another big chunk of public support.
So here's the question for you: Should we?

Returning Authors' Rights
The second project we've been working on in stealth is a plan to give
creators a chance to recover rights that they signed away many years
ago which the law gives them the chance to recover. Under US
copyright law, a creator has the right to "terminate" any transfer of
rights he or she made 35 years after the transfer. But to do so
requires an insanely complex series of steps which most creators
simply don't have the time or knowledge to engage in. Thus, the law
gives authors this right, but the law is so insanely complicated that
creators would have a difficult time trying to exercise it.

We can help with this. Over the past year, we've been mapping out a
computer program — a kind of wizard for termination of transfer
applications — that creators could use to know whether they have
rights that they might reclaim and to help authors reclaim those
rights. Using our wizard, a creator would enter information about his
or her transfer of rights. The wizard would then indicate what
possibilities are likely. And if the creator wants, the system would
then refer the case to a legal aid clinic or Volunteer Lawyers for
the Arts, so that with the help of a trained counselor, the creator
could reclaim his or her rights. We'd offer this tool for free. And
while, of course. we'd give creators the freedom to license any
rights they recover under Creative Commons licenses, we wouldn't
require them to do so. Instead, our only purpose is to make the law
simple so that it might work better for the people it was intended to
benefit: Creators.

This project will surprise some — those who think (wrongly) that
we're against authors' rights. In fact, in my view, this project is
the best expression of the ideals of Creative Commons: Find a way to
make the law simpler to manage, and find a way to make it easier for
creators to get what they want.

This project too needs a substantial amount of support. We should
have a beta by the beginning of February. But to test and implement
the project will require a great deal of infrastructure. Here is yet
another reason why you need to click on the support link below. Or
better yet, another reason why you should send the support link to
your 10,000 best friends. If we're to make these projects happen, we
need to build the infrastructure that they need. And while some out
there work for the sort of salary I get at CC (ie, nothing!), not
everyone on our staff can afford that sort of commitment. So click
and support, or email and ask others for support.

Next week, the final of these emails.

-------

To link to or comment on this message, go to:
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5734

Week 11 - Lawrence Lessig on CC Tools
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5726

Week 11 - Lawrence Lessig on CC Tools - Spanish Version
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/translations/lessig-letter-11-es.pdf

Thanks to Maria Cristinia Alvite for translation.

Archive of Lessig Letters
http://creativecommons.org/support/letters

Support the Commons
http://creativecommons.org/support

Learn More
http://creativecommons.org/learnmore

For comics and movies: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/how1,
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/

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  • [Community_studios] [cc-lessigletter] CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on New Projects, Lawrence Lessig, 12/21/2005

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